Then in May 2020, George Floyd was murdered and protest filled the country. Confederate statues have been taken down in Alabama, Texas, Tennessee and, perhaps most surprisingly, on Monument Avenue in Richmond, Virginia. The Governor of Virginia urged schools to get rid of Confederate names, and in quick succession many did.
Things had been relatively quiet on that front in Shenandoah County until the afternoon of July 4, when an item appeared on the agenda for the next school board meeting: “the names of schools”. Groups immediately formed on Facebook and petitions circulated, eventually garnering around 2,000 signatures in favor of the name change and 4,000 against. On July 9, in a virtual meeting, the board voted, 5 to 1, to remove the names of elementary school, Ashby-Lee — the names of two Confederate officers — and high school, Stonewall Jackson.
The fury was immediate. Outraged, Stonewall alumni packed school board meetings; a major school donor threatened to stop giving money; a member of the County Board of Supervisors sued to overturn the decision and filed a motion to remove the chairman of the board. The family members stopped talking. People were shouted at the farmers market.
For opponents of change, this was all an affront to democracy.
“It was the sneakiness,” said Renee Hawkins, 50, a Stonewall Jackson graduate. She and others filed a deluge of public records requests, revealing discussions leading up to the vote among board members, some of whom, Ms Hawkins said and others, had denied their intentions days before. “For 50 years people have gone to this school and never had a problem with the name. »